The management is confident to beat National Association of Software and Services Companies' (NASSCOM's) guidance of 11-14% in FY13. "We are confident to beat top-end of NASSCOM's guidance of 14% in FY13. Q1FY13 is likely to be a normal quarter," says Chandrasekaran.

The management expects broad based growth across verticals in FY13."We are more confident going into Q1FY13 than when we went into Q4FY12."

Projects and pricing

On a very positive note, the management elaborated that projects have been ramped up in the last fiscal and spends are likely to gather steam in second half of the year. The company is expecting several project to kick-start by next month. However, there are uncertain clouds overhang as global crisis is affecting its spends too. Therefore, the IT major is not hoping any significant pricing improvement this year.

Its spends in insurance sector is beginning to pick up while major deals are expected in manufacturing and media sector.

Below is the edited transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying videos.

Q: Do you think NASSCOM's guidance is okay 11-14% and TCS like in the past can meet that or do better?

Chandrasekaran: TCS can do better than the NASSCOM guidance, I feel confident today.

Q: There is no reason to doubt that 11-14% guidance from your perspective, right?

Chandrasekaran: The NASSCOM guidance is of 11-14%. That's a holistic view that they provide. But we always measure ourselves where we can perform better than the industry average. Where we are today, we feel confident that we will do better than that.

Q: You in the past have always done better than the top-end of the NASSCOM’s guidance, so more than 14% and without talking about number guidance?

Chandrasekaran: Sure that is what I mean.

Q: How do you feel about FY13 compared to FY12? If you were to just talk from your advantage point, is it going to be a normal year like you had in FY12, 23% volume growth during the year or is there anyway to liken it it’s slightly differently?

Chandrasekaran: I won’t put a number. But going into Q1 I feel much better than what I felt going into Q4.

Q: What has changed?

Chandrasekaran: I was feeling a lot of softness in the discretionary spend. I had commented in the January that the discretionary spend is likely to pick-up momentum only a bit later. I think it is beginning to happen. It’s eased. We are seeing the projects kicking off. We are seeing the ramp ups.

We are not seeing any particular client or set of clients or an industry or a market which is going through a specific problem. So, I think its broad based growth. We are doing very well across verticals, especially if you look at telecom, manufacturing, hi-tech retail, these are very important verticals which are nicely growing in the last couple of years.

Telecom had a tough year last couple of year. I think we have come off that. We have had very good deal signings in telecom. So, if you look at all those verticals are going to do well, in addition to financial services which I think is going to grow from where we are.